British farmer rejects £275MILLION to sell his land for housing

A farmer has rejected a £275million offer for his land from housing developers wanting to build a new town.

Robert Worsley said he would be ‘doing a massive disfavour’ to the community where he has lived all his life if he ‘took the money and ran’. The 48-year-old father of two has run 550-acre farm for the last 15 years.

He was approached by agents for housebuilder Mayfield more than two years ago. Other landowners on adjoining sites in Twineham, near Haywards Heath, West Sussex, are also believed to have been offered large sums.

The multi-million pound potential offer is 100 times the farm’s current value, even though it covers only one-seventh of the proposed 10,000-home development.

Mr Worsley, who has two daughters Anna, 13, and Rebecca, nine, is now battling the proposals, fearing that his local area faces ruin.  He said: 'We are a rural community who don’t want this development, who don’t want to see Sussex ruined.

‘I hope I am speaking for an awful lot of people who would have their quality of life diminished and the enjoyment of the countryside, which is the reason why they live here, diminished too.

'It’s not really about me. It’s about the fact that Sussex is being eroded away. That is the story I would like to tell. 'This presumption that we can just sell Sussex off as if it were gold reserves – we can never get it back.

Mr Worsley said that the company was pushing the plans by using the argument that the homes would be for the ‘greater good’ of the community. But he argued that the local infrastructure would not be able to cope.

Yesterday Nick Herbert, Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs, echoed Mr Worsley’s concerns.

He accused Mayfield of using ‘bullying’ tactics, and described them as a ‘kite flying exercise by a greedy developer’.

source:Dailymail